Cindy

My East Texas neighbors abound with mental problems, physical disabilities, and other strife, like characters from a Tennessee Williams play. Stories of lost fingers, hands and arms from the 1930s cotton gin era - The Heyday! - circulate through the library patrons and staff, more often than the books.

Some days I wonder if the high unemployment rate in this area is mostly due to issues like these, or to learned laziness? I'll never ask, lest I appear as the judgement passing City Slicker. It is more important to be thought of kindly here than to know facts.

Cindy was a 45-year-old library patron with an IQ of 55 who read on a 3rd grade level. Cindy didn't come to the library to read, she came to socialize. She came to the library to build herself a family since her own had cast her aside years ago. Cindy was friendly, yet angry.

Cindy had been married to a man of similar pedigree and IQ, and had given birth to two daughters. I guess her parents hoped for the best. What could they do; they had eight other children besides Cindy. It was left to God.

Eventually, the daughters were taken away from Cindy, as was her husband. The husband was sent to a mental health facility/prison, convicted of child molestation, and the daughters to an obscure relative in South Texas. I haven't seen Cindy in the library, or in town, since last year.

The tapestry of urban legend and gossip go on. The quilt continues . . . . .